20 most distressed ZIP codes in August

Despite the occasional bumps, foreclosures and mortgage defaults in San Diego County have been trending down this year. The number of people defaulting on their mortgages is at its lowest point since October 2008. Trustee deeds, which signal a foreclosure, are 40 percent lower than a year ago.

Still, there are areas seeing concentrated levels of distress, many of them repeats in our monthly Top 20 list. Here's this month's rankings, based on numbers from real estate tracker DataQuick and sorted by the number of foreclosures and defaults per 1,000 homes: